Last night's win over the Wizards was a perfect salve to help heal the wounds of this Hawks team. Strangely, in a game that saw the regular starting lineup on the floor together for only the 21st time this season, the Hawks bench put four players in double-figures and played a large role in never letting Washington make a game of it after the second quarter. The play of the bench was a huge boon for the Hawks, and the minutes played by the starters is the proof: 29:16 for Marvin Williams, 27:26 for Josh Smith, 26:17 for Mike Bibby (particularly nice with him nursing a sprained foot), only 15:17 for Al Horford, and a short (by his standards) 34:31 for Joe Johnson.

Those kinds of minutes for the starters are nice on most nights (unless it's against Orlando), but especially on the front end of a back-to-back, which brings us to tonight's game at Detroit. The Hawks have a chance to make a serious statement with a win in Mike Woodson's former stomping grounds tonight.

For as much as we tend to dissect the Hawks strengths and weaknesses, and worry about how the team hasn't lived up to the expectations they set coming out of the gate, the fact remains the team is 30-21 going into their final game before the All-Star break. With a 19-6 mark at home (outstanding) and 11-15 on the road(not the best, but an improvement), the Hawks are in great position to accomplish the goals they set, both before the season (50 wins) and as it's gone along (procuring the up-for-grabs 4-seed).

A win at Detroit tonight would send a strong message to the rest of the conference that they are serious about achieving those aims, with the added benefits of a) matching their season road-win total from a year ago and b) putting another game of distance between themselves and the 5th-place Pistons. A win tonight and Detroit is 3.5 games back of Atlanta with 30 games to play, and it gives the Hawks the all-important head-to-head tiebreak as the two squads only play three times this season.

The Pistons won't go down easy. They lost last night in Chicago, they're only 4-6 in their last ten, and they appear to be somewhat of a rudderless ship since trading Chauncey Billups to Denver for Allen Iverson, but they are still a team with a lot of pride and the confidence that making six straight Eastern Conference finals gives you.

Atlanta came out strong last night against the Wizards, but the Wizards are already on cruise control. If the Hawks can press the issue against the Pistons early on tonight, in Detroit, they can really give themselves some positive momentum going into All-Star Weekend.

Catch the team in action for the last time before the break tonight at 7:30 on SportSouth.